The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor
wanted sympathy, and there was something in the widow's directness which he felt would soothe him. He knew her good heart. He could speak freely to her, too, without being troubled by an over-delicacy of _mauvaise honte_, as he would have been with an Englishwoman. It would not have seemed sacrilege to the widow to discuss with him--who was a friend--the finest and most tender sentiments of her own, or any one else's, heart. He drew up a _bergre_ and kissed her hand.
"I have been behaving like a damned scoundrel," he said.
"My gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. McBride, with a violent jerk into a sitting position. "You don't say--"
Then, for the first time for many years, a deep scarlet blush overspread Hector's face, even up to his forehead--as he realized how she had read his speech--how most people of the world would have read it. He got up from his chair and walked to the window.
"Oh, good God!" he said, "I don't mean that."
The widow fell back into her pillows with a sigh of relief.
"I mean I have deliberately tried to make her unhappy, and I have succeeded--and myself, too."
"That is not so bad then," and she settled a cushion. "Because unhappiness is only a thing for a time. You are crazy for the moon, and you can't get it, and you grieve and curse for a little, and then a new moon arises. What else?"
"Well, I want you to sympathize with me, and tell me what I had better do. Shall I go back to England to-morrow morning, or stay for the dinner-party?"
"You got as far, then, as telling each other you loved each other madly--and are both suffering from broken hearts, after one week's acquaintance."
"Don't be so brutal!" pleaded Hector.
And she noticed that his face looked haggard and changed. So her shrewd, kind eyes beamed upon him.
"Yes, I dare say it hurts; but having broken up your cake, you can't go on eating it. Why, in Heaven's name, did you let affairs get to a climax?"
"Because I am mad," said Hector, and he stretched out his arms. "I cannot tell you how much I love her. Haven't you seen for yourself what a darling she is? Every dear word she speaks shows her beautiful soul, and it all creeps right into my heart. I worship her as I might an angel, but I want her in my arms."
Mrs. McBride knew the English. They were not emotional or _poseurs_ like some other nations, and Hector Bracondale was essentially a man of the world, and rather a whimsical cynic as well. So to see him thus moved must mean great things. She was guilty, too, for helping to create the situation. She must do what she could for him, she felt.
"You should pull yourself together, mon cher Bracondale," she said; "it is not like you to be limp and undecided. You had better stay for the party, and make yourself behave like a gentleman, and how you mean to continue. We have passed the days when 'Oh no, we never mention him' is the order, and 'never meeting,' and that sort of thing. You are bound to meet unless you go into the wilds. And you must face it and try to forget her."
"I can never forget her," he said, in a deep voice; "but, as you say, I must face it and do my best."
"You see," continued the widow, "the girl has only been married a year, and her husband is the most unattractive human being you could find along a sidewalk of miles; but he is her husband, anyway, and she may have children."
Hector clinched his hands in a convulsive movement of anguish and rage.
"And you must realize all these possibilities, and settle a path for yourself and stick to it."
"Oh, I couldn't bear that!" he said. "It would be better I should take her away myself now, to-day."
"You will do no such thing!" said the widow, sternly, and she sat up again. "You forget I am going to marry her father, and I shall look upon her as my daughter and protect her from wolves--do you hear? And what is more, she is too good and true to go with you. She has a backbone if you haven't; and she'll see it her duty to stick to that lump of middle-class meat she is bound to--and she'll do her best, if she suffers to heart-break. It is she, the poor, little white dove, that you and I have wounded between us, that I pity, not you--great, strong man!"
Mrs. McBride's eyes flashed.
"Oh, you are all the same, you Englishmen. Beasts to kill and women to subjugate--the only aims in life!"
"Don't!" said Hector. "I am not the animal you think me. I worship Theodora, and I would devote my life and its best aims to secure her happiness and do her honor; but don't you see you have drawn a picture that would drive any man mad--"
"I said you had to face the worst, and I calculate the worst for you would be to see her with some little Browns along. My! How it makes you wince! Well, face it then and be a man."
He sat for a moment, his head buried in his hands--then--
"I will," he said, "I will do what I can; but oh, when you have the chance you will be good to her, won't you, dear friend?"
"There, there!" said the widow, and she patted his hand. "I had to scold you, because I see you have got the attack very badly and only strong measures are any good; but you know I am sorry for you both, and feel dreadfully, because I helped you to it without enough thought as to consequences."
There was silence for a few minutes, and she continued to stroke his hand.
"Dominic has run down to Dieppe to see those daughters of his," she said, presently, "and won't be back to-night. I meant to be all alone and meditate and go to bed early; but you can dine with me, if you wish, up here, and we will talk everything over. Our plans for the future, I mean, and what will be best to do; I kind of feel like your mother-in-law, you know." Which sentence comforted him.
This woman was his friend, and so kind of heart, if sometimes a little plain-spoken.
* * * * *
And late that night he wrote to Theodora.
"My darling," he began. "I must call you that even though I have no right to. _My_ darling--I want to tell you these my thoughts to-night, before I see you to-morrow as an ordinary guest at your dinner-party. I want you to know how utterly I love you, and how I am going to do my best with the rest of my life to show you how I honor you and revered you as an angel, and something to live for and shape my aims to be worthy of the recollection of that hour of bliss you granted me. Dearest love, does it not give you joy--just a little--to remember those moments of heaven? I do not regret anything, though I am all to blame, for I knew from the beginning I loved you, and just where love would lead us. But it was not until I saw the peep into your soul, when you never reproached me, that I began to understand what a brute I had been--how unworthy of you or your love. Darling, I don't ask you to try and forget me--indeed, I implore you not to do so. I think and believe you are of the nature which only loves once in a lifetime, and I am world-worn and experienced enough to know I have never really loved before. How passionately I do now I cannot put into words. So let us keep our love sacred in our hearts, my darling, and the knowledge of it will comfort and soothe the anguish of separation. Beloved one, I am always thinking of you, and I want to tell you my vision of heaven would be to possess you for my wife. My happiest dream will always be that you are there--at Bracondale--queen of my home and my heart, darling. _My_ darling! But however it may be, whether you decide to chase away every thought of me or not, I want you to know I will go on worshipping you, and doing my utmost to serve you with my life.--For ever and ever your devoted lover."
And then he signed it "Hector," and not "Bracondale."
The widow had promised to give it into Theodora's own hand on the morrow.
He added a postscript:
"I want you to meet my mother and my sister in London. Will you let me arrange it? I think you will like Anne. And oh, more than all I want you to